Category: Sociology

To recap, I reached Kalpetta, the biggest town in Wayanad district in Kerala in the dead of the night without any adventure or mischief. Next day in the morning, I found that this town hardly got any tourists. There was a small tourism booth next to the Inter-State bus stop that provided the brochure of tourist attractions in Wayanad. As Hero had predicted there were no tickets available towards Bangalore on Sunday. However, I was told that there are plenty of alternatives available. I could go to the next nearby town Sulthan Bathery; chances of getting a seat from there are very high. Or I could wait for some private buses from the evening and board one of the many buses that run to Karnataka. All of them go via Bangalore.

Now when you are on an “adventurous” solo trip, you don’t really want to plan ahead and prepare too much. You know, it kills the entire concept of “adventure”, “living in the moment”, etc. If the man at the tourism booth says, it is easily possible to get back to Bangalore without reservation, it would be so. Since I am here only for two days, I can’t afford to waste time on going around, getting a reservation. Worst case scenario, I would return on Monday. It was possible in those days to fall ‘sick’ and not show up for work. So I didn’t care much about Hero’s words. He was probably trying to act too smart.

I decided to get started with my trip at the earliest, which basically meant visiting touristy locations around Kalpetta. I decided to take a local bus to go to Edakkal Caves. Bless 100% literacy rate and Christian missionaries in Kerala, language was not a big problem. The bus was rickety and broken just like it is in the northern states; the difference was that here I clearly stood apart in the crowd. There were fisherwomen with daily harvest, men working on tea estates and I, a light skinned, girl from a big town. I finally understood how Shah Rukh must have felt in Swades during local commute to remote areas.

To be less dramatic, it wasn’t a big deal at all. I got a place to stand and swing as the bus went around the hilly curves on the route to the caves which were on a hill top.

The caves were a big disappointment. They were hardly comparable to Elephanta Caves near Mumbai which I had visited already. Plus, I am not a fan of caves anyways. They stink, they are dark, dirty, and you can’t do much there. So I was standing there looking at all the families who were out there on picnics, making happy noises and cheer. It felt kind of stupid for me to be standing alone in a place which was certainly not recommended for solo travellers.

So I decided to move on. I wanted to go to a place of natural beauty where I can sit and meditate as I have seen seasoned solo women travellers do in travel pictures such as the one below.

If I want to make that picture, the timing was going to be right as the sun was rapidly moving towards the West. All I needed was a water body. I asked a nice man at a food stall about a dam nearby, Karapuzha Dam, another tourist destination. It turned out this man owned a van and was traveling in that direction. He offered me a ride.

Now, let’s review the facts. First of all, I had never hitchhiked in life previously. Also, I had always wanted to hitchhike badly. It was a dream. Standing alone on a highway, with my backpack on my muscular shoulders, looking like this. Ummm…

As I was drifting in my dream world of being that super confident cool hippie girl, this man in front of me was waiting for my reply.

Anu: No no no, I won’t bother you. I will go on my own. Can you guide me how to reach there?

Man: blah blah blah…. (Gist of what he said was that there is no easy way to reach via public transport.)

Now, I was kind of stuck. One option was to take the bus back to Kalpetta and figure a way to the next destination. Another option was to take this ride to the dam. The image of dusty noisy road and forlorn hotel (which by no standard was 2 stars, forget 4!) in Kalpetta made me incline towards this ride with stranger.

So how does one decide whether or not to take a ride with a strange man?

“Appearances do matter.” [Quote: Me.] Though I usually don’t give a damn about my own appearance but that never stopped me from judging others by their appearances. I don’t care for brands or fashion, often that goes pretty low in my hierarchy of “trustworthiness”. Questions that I try to answer while looking at a stranger’s appearance are “Is he married?”, “Does he have kids?”, “What job would he have?”. I try to put a “no-nonsense” label: low, medium, high.

“93% of communication is non-verbal.” [Quote: Management School Prof who taught my husband.]

Based on the above two signals, I took the call and became this girl. (While editing this pic, I realized I am blessed for not being a blonde.)

It was one heck of a ride. Bumpy and Rough. Literally. There was no road. And I was in a strange man’s vehicle. All reasons to be supremely nervous and doubtful of the destination. However, this man was one gem of a person. Seriously, it is funny (& erroneous) how quickly we make impressions of a place based on small/tiny experiences/datasets. However, that is exactly what I did. Based on that one car ride, South India (especially Kerala) for me became the most reliable place in the country. If you know me, you must have heard me comparing the two parts of the country and vehemently stating how safer southern states were. This was an impressionable moment.

I will skip through some of the other details of my trip which included a visit to beautiful and enchanting Kuruva Islands, where you can walk the across river Kabini to reach islands in the middle of the river. However, let’s come back to the main story and fast forward to Sunday evening.

Now after two days of solo travel, I had quite enough of the adventure. Many a times, I ended up feeling quite lonely. A few times I remembered my office gang from Bangalore and wondered why I didn’t invite them along. By Sunday evening, I was quite packed and ready to get back to my friends and home. The only problem was that I had no reservation. I had exchanged a few smses with Hero in the meantime which more or less meant that there were no seats available.

There wasn’t enough time to go to Sultan Bathery, so I stationed myself at the bus stop on Kalpetta main road and would check with each and every bus, if they would go to Bangalore and if they would have a vacant seat. Starting at around 6 P.M., I did this till 10 P.M. By this time, everyone at the bus stop knew me. As it grew darker and late in to the night, number of people on the stop gradually decreased. Only others like me without reservation remained. None of them were girls.

Four hours is a long time to spend on a bus stop hoping to get a bus back to your home. It is a reasonable amount of time to retrospect and curse yourself. It is enough time to think about different possibilities that might occur. I might not get the bus after all. For how long would be I standing here out on the road? Yes, Kerala is safe, but until what time should I start searching for alternate stay arrangements? How will I go back tomorrow?

A little after 10, a private bus for Bangalore moved in. We, without reservation riders, all crowded in close to the bus door to plead the conductor to take us in. Just then, someone tapped me on my sounders. I turned around to see Hero standing there.

Hero: Are you still without a reservation?

Anu: Yes

Hero: You can come with me. I had reserved two seats in this bus. We can pay inside the bus after we get the seats.

Anu: thank you thank you

At the time, my status msg at FB would have been something like this: — feeling shocked relieved happy thankful grateful.

We got the two seats. I thanked him again and slept off.

It was 530 in the morning when our bus was gliding towards its platform on Majestic. I was still amazed how I reached back home safely, without any misadventures. All thanks to this guy. We, with all other passengers got down. I was wondering what to say to him. How should I express my gratitude? Should I ask him to meet me later in the week sometime.

We were standing near an auto, ready to go separate ways. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him out for lunch or coffee to show my thanks. We said byes and rode off. Until a few days later, I kept thinking about the whole thing. I was expecting a call from him. Usually guys do that. Especially if they know they have a favour on the girl. But he never called. And it was too late by then for me to call. Or so I thought.

I never really got to thank him properly at that time. However, after a decade, I understand that travel is all about meeting different people and helping them. We help strangers and friends, without expecting anything in return. It happens naturally. That is why travel is one of the most compassionate and patient teachers in life.

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or clean or dust or arrange or furnish the house. It is not that I am a terrible cook. In fact I have improved in all these tasks considerably over the past few years. When I was single and living alone, I used to survive on a staple diet of vegetable khichdi. Now I can cook an entire meal of 4-5 items including roti completely on my own. No, the reason why my husband insists that I do not cook is kind of similar to the idea of his insisting that I should regularly go to gym. The reason is my happiness. If I am happy, he is happy.

The next logical question is, if cooking doesn’t make me so happy, why would I still do it? Simple. That’s the righteous thing to do. Same goes for other household chores. Though I claim and like to believe that I do not follow the rules of the society I was born and had grown up into, the fact is, I actually feel guilty when I divert from the normal curve. And I am not the only one. All the women I know, believe, that it is their responsibility to manage the house after marriage. Interesting thing to note here is, if they were living alone or with a roommate, before marriage, this feeling wasn’t there or wasn’t so strong. Before marriage, you can live in a mess, you can eat out, you can simply chill out. If a guest comes, s/he can drink directly from the water bottle. But after marriage, something suddenly changes, and now, as per your own self imposed rules, you behave in a different way. Now you serve water in a glass on a tray to your guests.

Why such a stark change? Simple. The righteous behavior. The societal pressure. Julia Robert’s ‘Monalisa Smile’ was the perfect movie to capture this sentiment. So after marriage, you furnish your house, use dining sets which were your wedding presents, buy decorative items, learn to play host, cook everyday meals, generally keep the house spic n span. I was talking to a close friend recently who had learnt contemporary dance forms for a couple of years before her marriage, but now doesn’t get time for it. Even though her job is same, but somehow her work load at home has grown multiple times.

So when my husband insists that I avoid all the household chores, as much as possible, he is actually playing a very smart move. First of all, if he tells me to do nothing, I can’t tell him to do anything. That is a very convenient situation for him. No one likes to do the chores. Secondly, I have a much higher sense of cleanliness than him. So, the house will always be clean from his standards, since the second it crosses my standards, I would have taken care of it. Again good for him, he gets to live in an arguably clean house without moving a muscle.These two are but very tiny benefits compared to what comes next.

He knows that I do not care about cooking or cleaning and just do that because that is what I expect from myself. So when he pushes me to utilize my time pursuing what I really care about: running, hiking, writing, reading, swimming, exploring, learning; I feel indebted to him. Now, how this helps him is the main point. Since, he doesn’t expect me to do the righteous thing, I can’t expect the same from him either. I can’t expect him to shop with me for household items or drink less frequently, or go pubbing only occasionally. If I want to go on a hike from 9-12 on a Sunday morning, I feel obligated to suggest him to go for a poker night on Saturday 9-12! The very boundaries of wrong and right have been crossed! I was the first one to cross them! And he is the one to reap the fruits!

Though it may sound like I am trying to make my husband look like a bad guy, the truth is far from it. I actually marvel at his ingenuity! Why does this strategy for marital bliss work? Because ‘breaking of rules’ behavior has to start from men. Women are by far much more rule-following, righteous kind of people. If more men suggest/ask/force their wives to behave in more non-traditional ways, they will actually get more “freedom” they desperately seek after marriage and not end up becoming slaves (ref: movie Pyaar ka Punchnama) themselves! Try it guys and let me know how it worked for you! ;-)

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When I was living in India, being an Indian didn’t really mean much to me. In fact, I used to think of myself as a global citizen. My fellow country people would also express their nationalist feelings very occasionally: either during cricket matches with Pakistan, during election times or on the national days.

Now when I am no longer in the country, I am reminded of being an Indian almost all the time. Here, living among so many nationalities, when you meet anyone, anywhere, either on a street or in an office, the first identification is that of your nation, your origins. After that comes gender, age, and the other characteristics of your identity. So for me, while living in Singapore, ‘who are you’ actually means ‘where you are from’.

What does being born and raised in India mean? A lot of things actually. It means developing a self-identification based on religion, caste, class, language, region. I remember in our school civics books, this diversity of India was always praised and glorified. I often thought this extreme diversity in India is a disadvantage in making it a modern nation. Now I know it has a huge advantage as well. Being born in a country like India, among so many different cultures, faiths and philosophies, you get a superb opportunity to develop a high level of tolerance within you. A tolerant and patient person finds it much easier to manage demanding and stressful leadership and managerial roles. Even though, at times we behave otherwise, I believe, growing up in such a diverse cultural background have given us an edge over other countries in developing these qualities. No wonder, India has a strong service industry with Indian CEOs and heads all across the globe!

I realize how many opportunities India has offered me when I meet people of other nationalities. This usually happens during adventure sports or outdoor events. Since my country people are traditionally not too ‘sporty’, I am often the only person from the Indian sub-continent. I realize how everything is easy for me and how I don’t have too many dependencies. For example, not having paper tissue will not create an emergency panicky situation for me. The cleanliness level of bed linen in a hotel room doesn’t bother me as much. If go to poor countries, with dirt and noise and traffic, I feel at home. If I go to rich countries, I feel awed. When people look at a 500 yrs old building and get impressed, I tell them about Badami caves of the 6th century and they are fascinated! When people find it remarkable that 5-6 kids in Tibet have to ride on a single motorcycle for an hour to reach their school, I tell them the stories about our current PM and other leaders who had to cross rivers and walk for miles to reach their schools. When people find it appalling that there is no proper sanitation in remote villages, I find it perfectly normal.

The cherry on top of the cake (of being an Indian) experience is when someone starts talking about mythology. Oh boy! I had no idea all those Amar Chitra Kathas and Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan and B R Chopra’s Mahabharat would become useful to me one day. I can go on and on about Hindu mythology for a rapt and enthralled audience of foreigners! While telling such stories, I myself realized how fascinating they are! The very idea of three Gods for creation-maintenance-destruction is mind-blowing!

Being born in India, in a household of plenty, I have had the best of all the worlds. I got the best education, best health care, could see mountains, rivers, birds, wildlife, beaches, plateaus, temples, mosques, churches, gurudwaras, had friends from so many different religions and regions. I could see extreme poverty and extreme riches. I learned to live in contradictions and extremes. I got a chance to live outside the country to be able to appreciate all this. The only thing that remains to be seen is whether my being born in India was (one of) the best thing(s) that happened to the country or not. :-)

Being an Indian in India is completely different from being an India in a foreign land. But that is an another post!

Happy Independence Day to my desh! :-)

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Traveling means a lot of things. It could mean commuting, visiting, exploring in a pragmatic sense and journey, transformation, adaption in a more spiritual sense. It means different things to different people, who travel for different purposes. In India, it is the family’s disposable income which determines what kind of travel people would undertake.

For instance, take me. I come from a middle class family which rose a higher after 90s financial reforms in the country. I went to college in early 00s. I was born in a society where there are no major career based ambitions from girls. My family had a modern outlook and there was no major family based ambitions either! In short, I was born in a household of plentiful with no major responsibilities or ambitions. For me traveling started as a way to escape campus and college. Coming out from a prestigious engineering college, I met people with no formal education running successful businesses, people in village farming for living, people who were living n a world which had nothing in common to my world. Meeting such people gave me hope. Considering my poor grades and no interest in getting a corporate job, going to remote hilly areas showed me a different perspective and made me realize that there is much more to life and still a lot that I can do. In a way, I used to travel to find a warm place for myself in an otherwise cold world.

On the other hand, lets consider a school history teacher I recently met in Kinnaur, an eastern district in Himachal Pradesh (HP) which shares its boundary with Tibet. She lives and teaches in a state-board school in Simla, the capital city of HP, with her daughter who studies in a more recognized English medium school. Her son is in the first year of college in Delhi and her husband lives in their hometown in Kinnaur handling the family business. This arrangement of living apart is necessary for the family to ensure a good education and future for the children and to keep the family business running for better incomes. The teacher is from a small town of Jeori, which is ahead of Rampur, the main political seat of Kinnaur.

We need to understand a bit about Kinnaur to get a perspective about our history teacher. Kinnaur has not been developed for tourism though it has one of the oldest roads from India to Tibet laid down by British in the 19th century, today referred to as Old Hindustan-Tibet road. Since half a century, alternate routes and roads were developed and used, this route was not paid any attention until last year, when the state PM expressed interest in developing this route into a national highway. In the last two decades, a better part of Kinnaur along the river Sutlej has been used for developing hydro-power projects. As a result of tunneling and landslides, the road after Rampur starts getting worsen after every mile. By the time, you reach Reckong Peo, the administrative capital of Kinnaur, there is no road at all. Just dirt and stones. I won’t go into details of the journey, as that is a different story and different blog.

This story is about me and the history teacher, who was my co-passenger and companion on our bus ride from Simla to Jeori, where she got down (I continued till Kalpa). So after more neutral topics like apple orchards and cherry blossoms which filled the view for as far as we can see, we both started poking our noses in each others lives. We got to know about each one’s family structure and profession, and background in general. She strike one as being an open minded hard working woman with good living standards. Since I was considering to go till Kaza in upper Kinnaur, I casually happened to comment to her, that she must have been to Lahual & Spiti. When she negated my presumption, I was overtly surprised. She must have seen the surprise on my face, and continued to say that she has never been any further east to her village! Not even to Peo! Not even to Kinnaur Kailash, the abode of Lord Shiva!

Honestly, I couldn’t get my head around this fact for quite some time. She must be in her 40ies, lived her entire life in this region, but she couldn’t travel for 100 kms to visit these amazing places for which I have traveled in a plane, a train and a bus already, covering more than 3000 miles! Why such a complete lack of interest and respect for travelling? As the time passed and roads cracked and bus wobbled along, it dawn upon me what travel meant to me was different from what it meant to her. Probably, for her traveling means meeting her husband and son. An additional expense. A risky business. A series of distressing events. Broken roads, falling buses, escaping swindlers. To see what? To what result? To see the same struggles she sees everyday anyways? The rich and effluent me would think: since she is coming from hills, she would like to see a beach, the ocean waves. Why not go there? The practical me would answer: given so many family engagements and religious functions, who has the time. So basically, travelling is not her priority. How could it be among so many social commitments and responsibilities?

There was this German girl, Janina, I met in Sangla Valley and we exchanged notes about our travels across the globe. For both us, travel has been one of the main teachers in life. Even though we come from different countries and backgrounds, we share the same love for travel. For us, it was strange that most people like the comfort zone of their lives and don’t prefer traveling. As per her, people don’t travel not because of lack of money but because of different priorities. To some extent this might be true; however, in India, the priorities are different due to lack of money. So those who get monetary compensation for personal travel as yearly allowance, they usually travel and like it. Those who have to dig in reserves might find it a waste of time and money.

I wonder why the travel allowance has been scrapped for a hike in salary in most of the government jobs in the country. Do we all collectively believe that it is better to spend money on clothes, jewelry, house, cars and other possessions than simply seeing more of the world? If so, then Janina was spot on! I hope someday traveling would belong to the same moral standards as praying and forgiving. After all, historically, it was those who weren’t afraid to cross the seas, found the new lands!

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“Once upon a time, in the month of rainy season called ‘sawaan’, on the third day after the full moon falling, all the married girls celebrated the rains outdoors. They wore colorful sarees called ‘lahriya’ and swang from rustic jhoolas tied to the trees. A young girl, sister of seven elder brothers, also wanted to do the same, but she didn’t have the lahriya saree. So she went to her mother and asked for the saree. Her mother said that she didn’t have such a saree, but the girl’s sister-in-laws have and she might ask them.

The girl went to all the sister-in-laws one by one, in vain. None of them wanted to share their sarees with her. The youngest of the sister-in-law agreed to lend her the saree, but on, what could only be called, an eerie condition. If the saree colors get washed in rains or it gets tore anywhere, the sister-in-law will cut the girl’s throat and use the blood to color the disfigured saree. The young girl agreed, happy to know she would get to wear the saree.

The luck not being on the girl’s side, when she went out to play with her friends, draped in the lahriya saree, it started raining heavily and in fear and confusion, her saree got caught in the swing and was torn. The young girl quickly dried and folded the disfigured saree and went to return it to her sister-in-law. The suspicious sister-in-law opened the saree, only to find it in ruins. Now she had to invoke the clause on the basis of which the saree was given. She went on a hunger strike and asked her husband, the girl’s brother, to kill the girl and fulfill the promise.

Meanwhile, this girl was married but not yet taken to her husband’s home. The time was ripe for her to go there. The brother, worried about his wife’s health, decided to escort the girl to her husband’s home and use this opportunity to kill her and color the saree. He did exactly that. The place where the girl was beheaded, in the jungles, a small flower plant grew. Everyone at her home thought that the girl has reached her husband’s place.

Later, when the dead girl’s husband’s family came inquiring about the girl, the truth came out. And when they tried to pull out the plant, where the girl had died, out came the Teej goddess.”

So, this is the story which is being told time and again across generations since a couple of centuries, if not longer, on the day of teej festival.

When I heard it, I had a lot of questions.

To begin with, why would we, as a society, keep such stories alive? Do we want to say tell our future generations that there was a time when people were more materialistic than now? Or do we want to tell them that violence was a part of everyday life or probably, it still is?

My teacher friends who have lived in different cultural societies such as japan, tell me that in those societies people don’t know how to steal because the concept doesn’t exist. So if there is an object lying on a bench of a park, you are just not supposed to pick it up unless it belongs to you. So people don’t steal, because the concept doesn’t exist.

In the same breadth, if we analyse this story, doesn’t it introduce the concept of killing and revenge to those who were otherwise ignorant of it? Why spread a virtue by introducing a vice? Why not instead, have a story where in the raining season, a young girl wanted to fill a tank of water, but the water would not go in that direction, so a goddess came to help her (if you insist to bring in the supernatural characters). Better still, the entire village supported her and together, they were successful in filling the tank which would store water for them in the dry season.

What values are we teaching ourselves and our future generations by these festivals and religious ceremonies? Or are we so busy and unconcerned and dumb, that we will merely play and act as told, without questioning or wondering?

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I have many friends, thanks to the non-tech education I got myself into, who feel very strongly about gender discrimination. These are all girls. As a matter of fact, the male-female ratio in education sector is reverse of the same in the tech sector. These friends of mine are highly gender sensitive and protest at the slightest of provocation caused by unequal treatment based on gender. Simplest example would be: if their moms tell them to come back home at a certain time or not wear clothes which attract attention (leading to further troubles) as they travel in public transport – DTC buses or to behave in a certain fashion outside the world, they revert back. They ask their moms why their brothers are not given a similar sermon. On how to behave with girls, on how not to stare (etc), on how to behave in a certain fashion outside the world. A simple explanation to the query which occurs to me is a scene from college days when I was traveling in a vikram in Kanpur. I was being stared at, in a very humiliating fashion. I responded. Asked the guy to stop staring. It didn’t help! It was a little late in the evening, dark outside. I was alone. I don’t even remember why I was alone in late evening; there were very few such instances when I would step outside the campus alone, if at all. I got a little scared. Often once you speak up, the person stops staring. He also gets scared. But this guy was drunk. Now when I think of it, I wonder why I didn’t understand then that asking a drunk guy to do something sensible was impossible. Anyways, he stared at me the entire journey. Which was like 7-10 minutes long only. Now, to answer my friend, can her mother also lecture this drunken middle aged man on how to behave with girls? Isn’t the onus on the girl to save herself in case of a coming catastrophe. But this wouldn’t answer her completely. She was asking why her brother, and not the stranger, is also not lectured about dos/donts. Are there no rules for boys to follow?

Yesterday while traveling on one of the main roads in Delhi, where traffic moves at a high speed of 60-70kmph, I saw something which made me question too. We were in the area where there is a temple at a slight elevation just on the one side of the road. In the current festival season I could see line of devotees outside the templer. Just as we were crossing the temple, I saw a girl being held by the arm and moved to the safer side of the road and the man (his brother or husband) coming to the other side on which the traffic was flowing. There is no pedestal there for the people to move and the traffic is very fast. When I saw that gesture, the man coming to the traffic side while the woman being moved to the safer side, I wondered why is it that I have never seen vice-versa. Will a woman, even the one with strong feelings about gender equality, ever offer to take the riskier side? Isn’t the same woman who harps about all equality and fairness also used to taking for granted the “gentleman-ness” of man – which includes small things like running around to get popcorn in movie hall and big gestures like giving up the chance to be saved first – “Women and children first”. Whats the fairness in that? And do we accept these as cases of discrimination?

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All the people I am friends with – unfortunately all of them come from middle class, tell me how reservation is such a bad thing. Reservation – affirmative action policy of India, is caste-based. Its party politics. Its injustice. Fortunately, I know people from other classes now. I have a friend teaching, in campus of IIT Kanpur, kids from the village inside the campus boundary and those belonging to worker class (construction and mess workers). He coaches them for JEE. Charges minimal. To draw his expenses. This is his way of contribution coz he loves to teach and he wants to see these kids rise. And the only hope he has is from the reservations. These kids don’t get any support from family – financial or otherwise. They work at home (household chores are plenty when both your parents and elder siblings are laborers) and they have to attend school to write the exam. Is it fair to think that these kids stand an equal chance to compete in meritocracy with the super rich kids from say DPS R K Puram? These kids can’t afford to buy any extra books, these books are gathered from first year students and institute library. They even have to care about how much they are spending on stationary forget books etc.

You go travel the world; yet you see nothing.

You are blinded about the fact that you are blinded because your other senses take over you. You live in an illusion and believe it to be true. And believe it to be true with such a fervor that you throw aside any other sight. You call that another sight an illusion. You hope you would never see it again. And you never do. Because you are busy growing other senses.

I have friends and family members who are freaked out about reservations. They have to think about their careers, their futures. I am concerned about them, but not a bit more than I am about the Nankari kids. Nothing is fair. Lets accept it. Its all about the power. And power never stays still.

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Its like common cold. Only more glamorous. No one would make a super-hit life-changing movie on common cold. At least no one has so far. Also much more deadly. Never heard of anyone killing themselves or dying naturally coz of an influenza flu. Though papers and news reports have claimed deaths due to the much feared board exams. Its an industry. From the individuals who just earn a little extra income by checking answer papers of large scale assessments and entrance exams (like my Dad used to do till late night for the better education of his kids) to those individuals who create and sell pre-school softwares worth 1-2 lacs and run centres where 4-5 yrs old kids become proficient in computers. Its a system. You get good education which gives you good job so that your kids get better education who can create jobs. Everyone can’t create jobs, for themselves or others. The society will fall out of order. Hence, you can’t give better education for all. But the system runs on the slogan of – universal quality education. Its prolific. Like common cold. And Everybody has a remedy for it. Yet there is no external cure to it. Its self-limiting.

Its not the end, its the means. It means different things to different people. To earn money. To develop confidence. To become a visionary. To build personality. To buy lifestyle. To travel the world. To explore the worlds. To survive. To live. Yet, its not the cause, its the consequence.

When we talk about universalisation of education and giving quality education to all, we effectively say, we want a certain level of skills in people. So that they are able to earn money. And lead a more comfortable life. If there is no money in the society or the nation, what will that means (=education) achieve?

Its a disease in which we are caught right now.

The real education lies in information dissemination. Yet, we don’t know anything for true. Gravity is just a concept. A belief. Teaching is nothing but influencing with subtle power.

The art lies in differentiating between information and beliefs.

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“If sharks were people,” his landlady’s little daughter asked Mr. K, “would they be nicer to the little fish?” “Of course,” he said, “if sharks were people, they would have strong boxes built in the sea for little fish. There they would put in all sorts of food plants and little animals, too. They would see to it that the boxes always had fresh water, and they would take absolutely every sort of sanitary measure. When, for example, a little fish would injure his fin, it would be immediately bandaged so that he would not die on the sharks before his time had come. In order that the little fish would never be sad, there would be big water parties from time to time; for happy fish taste better than sad ones. Of course, there would be schools in the big boxes as well. There the little fish would learn how to swim into the mouths of the sharks. They would need, for example, geography so that they could find the sharks, lazing around somewhere. The main subject would naturally be the moral education of the little fish. They would be taught that the grandest, most beautiful thing is for a little fish to offer himself happily, and that they must all believe in the sharks, above all when they say that they will provide for a beautiful future. One would let the little fish know that this future is only assured when they learn obedience….

If sharks were people, there would of course be arts as well. There would he beautiful pictures of sharks’ teeth, all in magnificent colours, of their mouths and throats as pure playgrounds where one can tumble and play. The theatres on the bottom of the sea would offer plays showing heroic little fish swimming enthusiastically down the throats of the sharks…. There would certainly be religion. It would teach that true life begins in the sharks’ bellies… In short, there could only be culture in the sea if sharks were people.”